Red Route

The Milan Metro has five lines named, understandably, the M1, M2, M3, M4 and M5.  I decided to tackle them in order, because of course I did, so early on a Sunday morning I boarded an M1 train to its southwestern terminus: Bisceglie.  

That's the terminus for the time being.  Milan has the habit of extending its metro in dribs and drabs, a couple of stations here, three more there, and as we'll see these extensions don't always go to plan. Earlier this year a three kilometre extension to Olmi was approved from Bisceglie, with new stations there and at Parri and Baggio.  

I walked up the steps to the exit behind three excitable teenage boys lugging large, oddly shaped bags.  One of them had his on a trolley, which made me think they might be golfers, but up top all became clear.  Bisceglie has a bus terminus built above it and there was a coach waiting for the boys and their mates.  It seemed they were members of a youth orchestra of some sort, and the bus station was swarming with kids clutching their instruments.  It was all pleasingly wholesome: a load of enthusiastic youths off on a Sunday morning to bash their way through Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.  

I let the boys get ahead a respectable distance then hovered on the steps to take the sign pic.

They don't get any better just because I'm abroad, folks.  And yes, I'm wearing a hat.  The July sun in Milan was absolutely merciless and when you're blessed with a Tefal Head like me, certain protection needs to be taken.  I do appreciate that it gives me a vague air of "background drinker in the Rovers circa 1976" but I am far too old to wear a baseball cap and if I wore a straw trilby I would almost certainly get beaten up.  And with good cause.

I walked along the wide avenue towards my next station with a broad grin on my face.  This is where I can be at my happiest: indulging my strange little hobby in a new city, knowing I had dozens of underground stations ahead of me.  This is the dream for me.  I could do this forever, working my way from metro to metro, then going back to the start to see what's changed.

Half-eight on a Sunday morning isn't exactly the time to experience Milan's vibrant personality but that was fine with me.  I was happy strolling down a wide boulevard, shaded by trees in the courtyards of neat apartment blocks, watching cars and trucks roll towards the city.

All too soon, I'd reached my second station.  The Milan Metro isn't big on surface buildings.  The majority of its stops are reached via staircases at the side of the road going down to a ticket hall built below the surface.  

There was a wait of a few minutes for the next train and I watched one arrive at the opposite platform.  As you'd expect for the Continent, Italian trains drive on the right; this fact absolutely refused to log in my brain and I'd spend the next few days being surprised when a train appeared in the tunnel behind me.  I may not be the cleverest person around.

Primaticcio was the next stop, constructed underneath a road junction with exits at each branch.  As you'd expect, I immediately walked out of the wrong exit, and had to cross the road to get to where I actually wanted to be.

I slid onto a back street here, one cooler and more shaded, where the apartment blocks hugged the pavement and hosted small businesses at their base.  A gay couple emerged from one of them, carrying light bags that looked like a picnic in waiting, and took off in their small car with a rev of the engine.

There was a curious building on one corner; a little bit of internet searching claims it's a synagogue, but there was no signage saying so.  Unless this is sadly how Jewish people have to be in 2026, concealing where they worship.

A woman with a tiny dog passed, getting its walk in before the day turned roasting, and I advanced on the station at Bande Nere.  Is it just me or does that sound like the hero of a Spaghetti Western?  "Quake with fear, banditos, for Bande Nere is here!"  And then his horse would rise up on its back legs and a load of dodgy ethnic stereotypes would scatter.  

I will say that the positioning of the station signs is a bit of a problem.  You only get the name of the station on the staircase going underground, which meant every time I stopped for a sign selfie, I had to pause halfway down and whip out the camera.  Fine when it's a quiet suburban stop, not so great when I got to the busy inner city.  There were a multitude of strange looks caught in the background as the days wore on.

Bloody hell I look awful.  The hat makes me look even more of a dweeb than usual.

At platform level, Bande Nere was much the same as the previous three stations.  Milan's station architecture is not awe-inspiring and unique.  The lines were built with value in mind, so the design elements are pretty uniform; two side platforms, columns between the tracks, cladding on the walls.  You get there via a staircase and, sometimes, an escalator, though that more often than not is up only.  There are exceptions - and they were extremely welcome when they came - but each line's format is repeated endlessly along their lengths.

Case in point: at Gambara the cladding stopped being lime green and became this pink and grey speckle.  Gambara was the terminus of this branch, opening in 1966; the stations as far as Inganni then opened in 1975, with Bisceglie opening in 1990.  The change of the cladding is the only hint that there was any gap between the openings, like rings on a tree telling you its age.

The mezzanine areas were built to house commercial properties, and some of them still house one or two - usually a newsagent-cum-snack shop-cum-tobacconist-cum-ticket office.  Most of the retail space is a bit sad, however, the windows covered with ATM logos and up for rent.

Let's see if I can manage a half-decent selfie?

Nope.

The Piazza Gambara lead me onto a diagonal route to my next station.  I was taken with a grand looking building on one side of the road which I assumed was a museum of some sort; it actually turned out to be a historic nursing home for the elderly, the Pio Albergo Trivulzio.  It's existed for centuries as an alms house, providing care for the poor, and the painter Angelo Morbelli did a great number of artworks of the interiors and the people within.  Apparently he was fascinated by the place; these days you'd get called a pervert if you turned up at the door of a nursing home and asked to study the residents.  

More apartment blocks, six or seven stories high, a variety of styles and eras but all with balconies and outdoor spaces.  I kept looking up at the terraces, hoping to see a louche Italian enjoying one of those tiny coffees, but it was still too early.  It's a skill how they manage to have a single shot of pure caffeine served in a thimble and yet it still takes them half an hour to drink it; if they were in a Starbucks an employee would push them out with a broom to clear the table for someone drinking something heftier.

At De Angeli, the street cleaners were out with their trash bags and grabbers, picking up litter from the flowerbeds.  The fact that there was a group of them, all in hi-viz, makes me think they may actually have been doing community service, but it was still nice to see.

Appropriately at De Angeli a heavenly light shone down and obscured the sign.

Wagner, my next station, is the last on the Bisceglie branch.  I'd already completed one spur of the M1 and it had taken less than an hour.  At this rate I'd have done all five lines by Wednesday and I'd be able to go out to Lake Como and relax with George and Amal Clooney for the rest of the week.

Instead of continuing towards Pagano station and the city centre proper, I decided to cut across to the other branch at Buonarroti.  The two stations are barely 300 metres apart, at either end of a straight road; you can't deny that the Milan Metro gives you convenience.

It was gone nine am now, and the city was beginning to wake up.  Restaurateurs were raising shutters and turning over chairs on outdoor seating.  Doors were being propped open to allow a breeze in.  There weren't many actual customers, not yet, but you could feel the life slowly seeping into the piazzas and pavements.  

The Buonarotti of the station name is Michelangelo Buonarotti, better known to us English speakers as the Michelangelo, of David and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fame.  There's something quite sweet about Milan insisting on his formal name for the piazza, like he's being scolded by his mum.  The statue at its centre, however, isn't of Michelangelo at all, but is instead of Giuseppe Verdi.  He looks very casual, hands behind his back and jacket pulled away.

The Casa di Riposo per Musicisti, which the statue looks at, was founded as another retirement centre for musicians and opera singers by Verdi himself.  His tomb is inside and it continues to give a home for divas in their declining years.  I wouldn't fancy giving those ladies a substandard lunch, I'll say that much; even in their 90s I bet they can throw a grade A hissy fit.  

From Buonarroti to Amendola, and a surprise.  The station originally opened as Fiera, because of its proximity to Milan's Exhibition Centres, and so it was built to accommodate crowds.  The ticket hall was put under a plaza and given a large multicoloured roof.

Ok, it could do with a bit of a clean, but it was incredible how much the daylight lifted the ambience of the space.  With black walls and black rubber floors, the stations on the M1 can seem particularly dark, with only the red of the line theme as a contrast.

There's also a large statue in the square by the station, called Ragno agonizzante, which translates as "Spider in Agony".  And yes, it does look a bit like a dead spider, one of those desiccated ones you find curled under the sofa when you move it to hoover.  Why you'd want to have a piece of artwork representing this in your city is another matter.

I walked along the Via Monte Rosa, a mix of brand new office buildings and older apartments.  Graffiti for a gang of football "ultras" - rebranded hooligans - carried the number 1312, which I have learned is code for ACAB.  There was a branch of Popeyes, which irritated me; I accept that British people have terrible taste in food and will accept any American nonsense that gets pushed our way, but you think the Europeans have a bit more class. 

Further up there were some soldiers by the side of the road, prepping for the day ahead.  I'd already spotted a gaggle of them outside Milan Central when I arrived the day before.  It seemed that they were being deployed at crowded parts of the city, presumably to reassure us that if a terrorist were to attack, he'd be swiftly shot by one of the nation's soldiers.  I'll admit I hadn't even considered that I might be murdered by a lunatic until the presence of the army raised the idea.

Now I don't want to disparage the soldiers of the Italian army and their no-doubt fine history of bravery and combat.  I'm not going to peddle tired stereotypes about them being lazy and perhaps less disciplined than their contemporaries elsewhere.  I'm sure they've been in many conflicts over the years, and I'm sure they've won some of them.  I will, however, note that these soldiers in particular had gathered round a fan to cool themselves,  and I'm not sure you'd get away with that sort of behaviour if you was a British soldier in, say, Afghanistan.  It didn't exactly scream "fearsome killing machines".

Piazza Lorenzo Lotto is a square that has existed at the centre of Milan's leisure activities for decades.  The fiera was close by, the city's racecourse abutted it, and on its northern edge was something I really wanted to see: Milan's Lido.

Opened in 1931, it still houses the largest swimming pool in the city, along with other sports facilities.  I love a lido.  Every town should have one, especially if you can put a lid on it in winter for ice skating.  Swimming is so much more pleasurable when it's under a blue sky, and with global warming, you don't even have to heat the water.  A rare upside to the death of the planet!

The Lido di Milano is, however, in a bit of a parlous state.  It closed for refurbishment in 2019 and since then work has been fitful.  It begins, it stops, it begins again; the completion date has slipped from 2023 to, possibly, the end of this year, though nobody seems very hopeful it will actually happen.  In fairness, it is a large job, with additional facilities being added to turn it into more of a multi-use sports facility, but that still doesn't explain the hikes in costs and the sheer length of time being taken.

I skirted the edge of the piazza, heading back to the metro station entrance.  This was made more complicated by the roads being churned up as the city installed a dedicated trolleybus lane through the centre of the square and down the middle of the adjoining roads.  Eventually I made it to the entrance on Via Monte Rosa, having done an entire 360 degree circuit.

As with Amendola, Lotto was built for the crowds, and below ground it was expansive.  On a quiet Sunday it all seemed over the top.

Lotto also gave us our first interchange on the M1, to the M5 line.  The original three metro lines meet in the heart of the city, but the twenty-first century additions skirt it to the north and south, providing bypasses and alternative places to change.  

I was going to continue with the rest of the Rho branch, but I think both you and I need a rest at this point before this turns into a slightly more boring War and Peace.  Come back another time for more pointless perambulation.  I can't promise you it'll be interesting, but it will at least be thorough.